


Keep You Like an Oath

by belovedmuerto



Series: Keep You Like An Oath [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Gen, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, except not, soulmates!au, that is starting to get better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 18:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4147488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He arrives in New York like any other person: on the train, anonymous, just part of the crowd, another wide-eyed new person looking for who knows what. Except he’s neither wide-eyed nor new. He’s not new to the world, he’s not new to New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep You Like an Oath

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks, as always, to Moonblossom for the beta.
> 
> Goddamn Pete Wentz and his catchy-ass fucking lyrics anyway.

He arrives in New York like any other person: on the train, anonymous, just part of the crowd, another wide-eyed new person looking for who knows what. Except he’s neither wide-eyed nor new. He’s not new to the world, he’s not new to New York. He feels incredibly old.

In New York, he is anonymous. No one knows him. No one cares who he is or what he’s done, as long as he’s not in their way. It doesn’t matter what he’s done, it doesn’t matter what he will do. The city is the city, and shall continue onwards, river to the ocean.

He is anonymous, and he finds it at once freeing and terrifying.

He barely knows who he is himself, and New York probably isn’t the best place for him to try and figure that out, but. DC wasn’t right either, and neither was rural Maryland. DC was too hot, too close and with too many eyes, and rural Maryland was too far away, too conspicuous if he stayed too long. If he wants to be Bucky Barnes, if he wants to find any part of that man he used to be, he needs to find a place where he can search for that, where he can figure out who he is, who he wants to be. He’s just not sure if that’s an actual place.

Perhaps it’s a person, instead.

If it’s a person, as he suspects as of his second hour in New York, then he’s well and thoroughly fucked.

He knows this used to be home. Well, Brooklyn, anyway. And maybe he can go back there, maybe he can find some piece of himself wedged into the cracks in sidewalks and the old buildings. Maybe he can find some sign here, that he’s ready to see Steve again.

Maybe New York will help him feel like a whole person again, like an actual person again. 

Or maybe he’s just deluding himself, and being in a different city will change nothing and he’ll never get to a point where he will think he’s ready to find Steve. Maybe he’ll never remember any more than he already has, and his memories will keep rewriting themselves every night.

Maybe he’ll be forever stuck, halfway between the thing they made him and the person he used to be, unable to really live, always stuck in the middle.

\----

Sam is on the phone when Steve comes back into his house. He looks up and smiles at Steve and goes right on talking, a mile a minute, and it’s obvious that he’s saying words, words in English even, but it’s all gibberish to Steve. And Steve has an ear for languages. He must be talking to his cousin Juanita; Steve’s heard them speaking a few times since he started crashing with Sam, and they seem to have a special language between the two of them.

It’s a soulmates thing, it must be. Steve goes into the kitchen, half-listening to their conversation, not that he really understands it. He finds it soothing even as it ramps up that constant ache in his chest. Steve hasn’t met Juanita, she lives in Philadelphia, but he’s talked to her once or twice, and he likes her. She has that same calm and unflappable quality about her that Sam does, that Steve finds incredibly soothing and _safe_.

He wonders if he and Bucky will ever have a chance at something like that, at developing their own personal language. Steve feels like they used to have something like that, or at least a series of expressions that meant a whole lot apiece, but whatever it was, it’s gone. He doesn’t know if they’ll be able to get it back. He doesn’t even remember what any of those expressions used to mean, just that they had them. He thinks there was probably at least a few that meant “what the fuck Stevie”, but he doesn’t know what any of his own meant to Bucky. And he’s not even sure he’ll ever be able to ask. He’s not sure he’ll ever have that right, to inquire about something like that to Bucky. Steve doesn’t even know if Bucky does or will ever remember those speaking glances.

And, okay, he’s getting way too maudlin and he needs to take a break.

He gets an apple out of the fridge, and the peanut butter out of the cabinet--and it’s a little jarring how quickly he’s picked up where Sam keeps things in his house, especially when he remembers that he never could find the peanut butter in his own cabinets--and spoons some of the peanut butter into a bowl, washes and starts cutting the apple.

Sam comes into the kitchen a moment later, after he’s gotten off the phone with Juanita, and swipes his finger through the peanut butter jar, sucking it off afterwards with a grin that would be lascivious if he was anyone else, but since he’s Sam and he knows how much that bugs Steve, it’s just evil.

“Dude,” he says, crows really, at the look on Steve’s face. “It’s my peanut butter!”

Steve scowls some more and slices the knife forcefully through the last of the apple, thankful he’d gotten out a cutting board, at least. He’s thankful Sam has a cutting board, or else he’d probably be buying the man a new countertop now.

Steve scoops the apple into the bowl with the peanut butter, dumps the knife and the spoon and the cutting board into the sink with a clatter, and waltzes out of the kitchen. Sam hates it when he--

“Goddammit Rogers, do your own fucking dishes!” 

He hates it almost as much as Bucky always had, that Steve never does his dishes.

For a moment, he’s paralyzed on his way to the couch, remembering that he’d gone back to his apartment and Bucky _had done his dishes for him_ , just days ago, and he has to shake himself free of it and remind himself that now is not the time to have a breakdown over dishes.

When he turns around, Sam is standing in the kitchen doorway, brows raised, and Steve tries to find the grin that Sam’s outburst should’ve prompted, but he can’t. He just can’t quite manage it, no matter how he tries. Instead he sighs, and drops his head to stare at the bowl of apple and peanut butter in his hands. He forces himself to relax his grip, just enough so that he’s no longer in danger of shattering the bowl.

“Take a deep breath, man,” Sam says, quiet now. 

Steve obeys.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Steve takes another deep breath, even though Sam hadn’t told him, and shakes his head.

“How’d it go at your place?” Sam asks, and that seems to break the spell.

Steve looks up and smiles, just a little, and turns to finish his trip to the couch. Sam comes over and sits next to him, steals a slice of apple and a dollop of peanut butter out of his bowl. Steve lets him.

“It went okay, once the building manager figured out that I’m willing to pay for the wall to be fixed and whatever, since they can’t exactly bill SHIELD for it these days.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess. I mean, at least they’re not going to sue you, right?”

“I don’t think so. If they do, I guess I can call Tony? Ask him to send me a lawyer or something? He said something about lawyers, guns, and money the last time I talked to him, I don’t even know.”

Sam chuckles. “Ha, you’ll have to google that one. I know it’s a song but I can’t remember the guy’s name.”

“Oh, was that a quote of some kind?”

“Yep.”

Steve shrugs. “Well, whatever. I’ll add it to my list. But yeah, they’re going to send me the bill for fixing the place up, and apparently it was leased furnished by SHIELD, so I don’t have to worry about getting anything out of there.”

“They didn’t even let you pick out your own furniture, Steve? Man, no wonder they got taken over by HYDRA.”

Steve chuckles, but it’s not exactly an untruth. The apartment had always felt lifeless, like it wasn’t really his. “When I find somewhere in New York I’ll let you help me pick out stuff.”

Sam smiles. “Careful, or Tony will do it all for you.”

“God, that’s so true.”

“So when are you leaving?”

Steve shrugs. Now that he’s faced with the actuality of the situation, of leaving behind DC to go back to his hometown, it’s a little daunting. It’s feels like he’s running, but he knows this is a thing he needs to do.

“You know you can stay here as long as you want, Steve,” Sam adds. “You don’t have to go. And if it turns out you need me to go with you to Europe or wherever, I’m there, no questions asked.”

“Thanks Sam. I appreciate it.”

Sam claps him on the back. “That’s what friends are for, Steve.”

Steve smiles, a little. “I guess I’ll probably try to finish getting all my stuff sorted out, and then I’ll head up there in a day or two? I need to call Tony, see if it’s okay for me to stay at the Tower for a few days.”

“I’m pretty sure that guy has a spare room for you. He probably has a spare floor, Steve.”

\----

He’s not sleeping, and he’s not sure why. 

He has a few ideas, though. It’s probably a little bit because of the place he’s staying: dirty and old and roach (and who knows what else) infested, more of a flophouse than an actual hotel, but it’s cheap and anonymous and he feels both of those things right now, so he fits right in.

It has hot water, sometimes, and after he fiddles with it for a while the shower works okay. He’s armed and glarey enough that the other patrons don’t bother him, not even the prostitutes, though one or two of them do at least eye him up and down, at first. None of them speak to him.

He prowls the city, mostly at night because he’s not sleeping and it’s quieter, relearning its streets and alleys and nooks and crannies. He spends a lot of time walking back and forth between Brooklyn and his hotel, though he never purposefully directs himself there, and he can never manage to stay too long.

It echoes too much for him, Brooklyn. 

After a few days, he decides to risk going to look at Avengers Tower.

He’s not sure if that is the building’s official name or not, but that’s the only name he’s ever heard attached to it, and he knows that Steve is an Avenger. Steve is the first of them, in fact. 

Steve always was, even before his body matched his heart.

It’s a big ugly building, right over Grand Central, and the area is bustling. He blends in with the crowd, and prowls around the building a few times. He touches it, once, but he doesn’t like the way it feels, like the building is watching him, so he retreats into the train station and buys himself some donuts and a coffee. The donuts are better than the coffee.

Thus fortified, he goes to look at the building some more. 

Steve’s teammate lives here. A couple of them do, sometimes. He wonders if the red-headed woman lives here. 

He knows that Steve isn’t here yet, but he thinks perhaps Steve will come here, first. He will feel like it’s an obligation, if nothing else, to stop in and say his hellos to whomever is living here. Steve has manners, sometimes. He falls back on them, when he’s unsure or angry.

There is nothing politer than a furious Steve Rogers; the thought makes him smile.

The smile and the irrational surge of warmth that comes with it carry him into the lobby.

Even the lobby of the building is bustling, men and women in business attire hurrying back and forth. Many of them are staring at phones or tablets. 

None of them pay him any attention, not even the security guards in the corner. 

He looks around for a few minutes, taking in the high ceilings and the lights and the tinkling sound of the fucking waterfall in the corner, and he tells himself that none of these people have guns, or at least not ones they’re going to point at him for standing in the lobby. He tells himself he has sightlines and exits, even if there are A LOT of people, and he keeps telling himself that, and then his phone beeps.

It’s a sound that he’s never heard it make. The only sound it ever makes are the ones of the keys when he’s looking for something on the little search engine (it’s a pain in the ass typing with just the one hand, but it doesn’t read the arm as real.

He knows how it feels.)

Bucky pulls the phone out of his pocket and looks at it. 

He has a text message. He has no idea who it could even be from. No one has this number. He didn’t even give it to Steve, when he’d made that brief pseudo-contact with Steve. 

_Good morning, Sergeant Barnes. I do not wish to alarm you, I merely want to make you aware of my presence and let you know that I am aware of yours within the Tower._

_What the fuck?_ Bucky thinks. 

Another text pings while he’s still staring at the first one.

_I am Jarvis, I run the Tower. Please let me reassure you that I have alerted Security that your presence is not to be remarked upon, and no one is to disturb you while you are here._

The name Jarvis tweaks at something in his mind, but he can’t grasp what it is. Slowly, he types out a reply.

_How?_

_Agent Romanov spoke to me several days ago, and alerted me that you might visit the Tower. She asked me to keep an eye out for you, but not to disturb you or alert Sir to your presence. He has a tendency to be slightly overwhelming to people who aren’t expecting him. Captain Rogers is not currently in residence here. Would you like me to contact him for you?_

_No!_

_Very well, Sergeant. Is there anything I can do for you, while you’re here?_

_Are you head of security?_

_In a way. I am an artificial intelligence created by Anthony Stark. I run the entire building, amongst other things. I am a computer program, to put it simply._

Bucky has a brief flash of memory, books and films, two young boys gushing over robots and aliens (one of them more than the other, honestly).

He shoves his phone back into his pocket and all but flees the building. 

\----

Everything has been packed away or packed or sent on to the Tower (clothes, mostly. He doesn’t really own a lot of stuff anymore). At this point, even Steve is aware that he’s just dragging his feet. Everyone is aware that Steve is dragging his feet, and for the most part they’re indulging him.

Up to a point, anyway.

“I think you’re just fretting at this point,” Sam says.

“I don’t _fret_ ,” Steve replies.

Sam just snorts, and Steve lets his shoulders fall. Okay, so he’s fretting.

“I’ll leave in the morning,” he adds.

Sam nods. “You said that yesterday.”

Steve glares at him, and Sam raises his hands. “I mean, I’m not saying Steve, I’m just saying.”

Steve glares at him some more.

“I’ll come up this weekend, Steve. You owe me a tour of this ridiculous Tower of Stark’s, anyway.” 

“I’m not even sure _I_ know my way around that big ugly building. It’s even bigger and uglier now than it was before!”

He calls Tony that night, though. It’s the last step, it means he’s really going. He’s leaving for New York. He’s heading towards… something. Bucky, hopefully. At least, it feels like he’s heading towards Bucky. Or possibly imminent death.

“Cap!” Tony greets him when he answers. “Good to hear from you! How’s it going? How goes the downfall of Western Civilization at your hands?”

“Tony, it wasn’t all of civilization, just SHIELD.”

“I mean, you say that now.”

“Thanks, Stark.” Tony always makes him sarcastic. “How was that thing with AIM you never called anyone about?”

Tony completely ignores that. “So what’s up? You finally coming up to New York?”

“Actually, yes.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes, Tony.”

“Awesome, I’ll get your floor opened up. Pepper’ll be super psyched to see you, I think she might actually like you better than me sometimes; I’ll have JARVIS send you directions to the garage when you’re close, just keep your phone on, he’ll keep track of you. See you when you get here!”

“Floor?” Steve echoes, but Tony’s already hung up on him.

He takes the phone away from his ear and looks at it for a minute, confused. That isn’t an unusual occurrence when he talks to Tony Stark, though. Tony thoughts are always about three miles ahead of his mouth, but he still talks way faster than Steve’s used to. 

\----

Bucky gets another text late that day, when he’s walking around Brooklyn, directionless but finally calmer after his conversation with Jarvis earlier.

This text is also from Jarvis. Jarvis is the only… entity that has ever texted him. He doesn’t know anyone in this weird future where he’s in between being a person and being a thing.

_Please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, Sergeant Barnes._

Bucky looks at his phone for a minute, until the screen goes dark, and then he wakes it up again, and types out, slowly, _Thank you. Can you let me know when Steve is on his way?_

_Of course, Sergeant._

_Give me enough notice to get there before him?_ Bucky adds, after a few minutes.

It seems he’s made his decision.

When he gets the text from Jarvis the next afternoon, he’s already packed and waiting.

_Sergeant, Captain Rogers should be at the Tower in approximately 90 minutes._

_I’ll be there in forty_ , he replies.

\----

Steve follows Jarvis’s directions to the private garage underneath the Tower, full of mostly Tony’s various sports cars. He parks his motorcycle in a free spot and grabs what little he’d brought with him, a duffle bag and the shield in its carrying case. He slings it over his back, the duffle over his shoulder, and heads for the waiting elevator.

There’s something there, poking at the back of his mind, but he can’t put his finger on it. It feels a little like a shiver up his spine, like someone is watching him, but the garage is utterly deserted so he knows it’s not that. There wasn’t even an attendant, just the biometric scanner and Jarvis watching the entrance. He’s ready to dismiss it entirely when he walks into the elevator.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” Jarvis greets him when he’s inside. “Welcome to the Tower. Your floor has been prepared for you.”

“Thanks, Jarvis,” Steve replies. He’s exhausted, and all he wants to do is take a hot shower and try to forget the aching in his chest for a while. Maybe sleep, although he’s not sure he’s going to manage that, when he’s pretty sure that Bucky is out there somewhere in the city. 

He wonders if he could just go out and look. He did, after all, manage to find Bucky the last time he’d gone looking, needle in a haystack style. New York is probably a little bit more crowded than Austria was, though. And he’d had an idea of where to start that time. Bucky could be literally anywhere in the five boroughs. He could be standing across the street right now and Steve wouldn’t know it unless Bucky chose to make contact.

He tries not to let that get him down. He’ll never be able to find Bucky if he doesn’t try to at least be positive about it. 

“You have a visitor,” Jarvis adds, once the elevator is closer to the billion and twelfth floor, or whichever one it is that has been designated as Steve’s. 

Steve’s heart stops.

“I have been asked to request that you move slowly when you enter your floor, and keep your shield with you,” Jarvis finishes, seemingly unaware that Steve is struck dumb and paralyzed where he stands.

Steve is still blinking at nothing when the elevator doors open, and he is finally able to move again, able to breathe again, and he does the exact opposite of what Jarvis had asked, dropping the shield with a muffled clang and sprinting down the hall to the living room.

Bucky is across the room, posture defensive, scowling.

“You ain’t got the sense of preservation God gave a damned goldfish Steve, Jesus,” Bucky says, as Steve watches him force himself to relax, force himself not to be ready to flee or fight to the death.

Steve opens his mouth to speak and a noise comes out of it, pained, ecstatic. Something much closer to a sob than the laugh he’d thought it might be.

Bucky takes a step towards him and stops. He frowns, and Steve thinks he’s unsure what he’s supposed to do. Unsure if he’s supposed to offer comfort or if he’s unwelcome or something else.

“That’s what I have you for, right?” Steve forces the words past his lips, though they come out watery and cracked.

Bucky takes another step and shrugs. “Dunno I’m much good for that these days. I did almost kill you the last time.”

Steve doesn’t even try to stop the sob that escapes his throat. “Are you really here?”

Bucky shrugs again, and Steve lurches forward, across the vast distance still separating them, fetching up against Bucky, not quite touching him, but close enough to smell him, to feel the heat of him. Close enough to see that the stubble hides how sunken his cheeks are, close enough to see the faint tremor in his limbs, fear or exhaustion or hunger or all three.

Steve reaches out for him, instinct telling him to take, to hold, but he stops himself, because. There’s too much now, too much time between them. Far bigger a chasm separates them than the last time he’d gone looking for Bucky, and Steve can’t help but remember the last time they’d been reunited, and he’d been able to just reach for Bucky, reach for him and feel his breath ghosting across his neck, reach for him and hold him tight and just be grateful that he wasn’t dead.

He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to do that anymore.

“Can I?” Steve’s words have no voice, a mere breath, an insignificance of sound belying the importance of the question.

Bucky nods, a jerk of his head that used to mean something else. It used to be an invitation, bring it on punk, but now it’s permission, and Steve’s fingertips alight on Bucky’s cheek.

His stubble is soft. Another noise escapes Steve’s throat.

“Shh,” Bucky instructs. 

Steve lets his head drop. He can’t stop, he can’t stop the noises, he can’t stop the tears coursing down his cheeks. He’s starting to sniffle with it. It’s been too many years since he had a runny nose, and he manages a watery chuckle at the fact he can’t stop crying. 

After a moment, he feels Bucky drop his own head, pressing their foreheads together, and Steve sobs again.

“Please tell me you’re here,” Steve whispers.

“Yeah,” Bucky replies. “I think so. Can’t seem to do it on my own. Don’t feel right.”

Steve feels him shrug.

“Pretty sure I ain’t done a damn thing worthwhile except with you by my side, punk,” Bucky finishes. He’s whispering as well, and Steve can hear the tears in his voice anyway.

“Jerk,” Steve replies. “Are you okay?”

Bucky draws back, and Steve lifts his head. Bucky is staring at him, as though he’s gauging whether the question is genuine. Eventually, he shrugs.

“Are you?” Bucky asks.

“No. God, no. It feels like I haven’t taken an easy breath in decades.”

“Yeah. Me neither.” And here Bucky lifts his hand, his flesh hand, and lays it gently against Steve’s cheek, swiping his thumb against the trail of tears on his skin, and makes a gentle noise, something Steve hears as instruction to stop crying.

He tries. He really tries. It doesn’t quite work, and for a long time he just stands there, breathing in Bucky’s presence, his entire existence narrowed down to the feel of Bucky’s hand against his face, and lets himself grieve and rage and exalt in how long they were apart and the fact that his chest doesn’t ache anymore.

\----

They move, eventually, first to the couch. Steve sits, mostly in the middle, and Bucky fits himself against the arm at the end of the couch, drawing his knees up to his chest and putting his chin on one of them, watching Steve.

Steve watches him right back.

They don’t really talk, they just watch each other. 

There’s too much to talk about. Steve offers to get food, and Bucky shakes his head. 

Eventually, Bucky shifts so that his toes are under Steve’s thigh, and Steve wonders when Bucky took off his shoes, or if he even had any.

Is that the sort of thing he can even ask about?

“Where are your shoes?” he asks. It’s the first thing either of them has said in a long time.

Bucky shrugs. “By the elevator. Why?”

Steve shrugs in response.

Bucky pokes him with one toe, but he withdraws his feet from under Steve’s thigh, and Steve hates how bereft it makes him feel.

A moment later, Bucky puts his toes back under Steve’s thigh, and something loosens in Steve’s chest.

\----

Steve asks him when the last time he’d slept was, and he makes himself shrug and not laugh at that question. 

He’d looked at himself in the mirror in the enormous bathroom before Steve had arrived. He’d thought about shaving, briefly. About hacking all his hair off, trying to make himself look like that guy.

Like Bucky Barnes.

He still doesn’t quite feel like him. He hopes Steve doesn’t mind.

So far, Steve does not seem to mind. Or even notice.

He’s not so sure that’s a good thing.

But after he’d shrugged, Steve had stood up from the couch and looked down at him. He doesn’t like the way that makes him feel, small and vulnerable and safe and cared for all at the same time. It’s confusing, the amalgam of emotions Steve engenders in him. 

“It’s late, and I didn’t sleep much last night. Let’s get some shut eye?”

He shrugs again, because he’s not sure he’ll be able to sleep, not even here in this ridiculously opulent place.

Steve walks away, and he gets up and follows. They go down the hallway and Steve learns the layout of the floor (he’d already done his own recon, with Jarvis as guide, when he’d arrived and had been too nervous to sit still and wait). There are two rooms, and Steve offers him whichever one he likes.

He chooses the one with better sightlines and a more defensible position. Steve doesn’t look surprised, and he retreats to the other room, with his duffle bag and the shield in its carrying case. 

Bucky gets his shoes from their spot by the elevator and puts them under the bed, and they lays down on it. He folds his hand together with the fingers of the arm and stares at the ceiling.

This may have been a mistake. 

There’s a knock on the door, which he’d left open a crack, the better to hear noises.

“Can I come in?” Steve asks from the other side.

“Yes,” he replies.

Steve pushes open the door and takes a step inside. “Can I--?” 

Bucky turns his head to look at Steve, and then nods. He doesn’t even know what Steve is trying to ask.

He doesn’t care. Whatever it is, Steve can have it.

Steve crosses the room and lays down next to him. 

Oh.

Steve turns his head and looks at him. His eyes are still red from the crying. Bucky had done his fair share of it as well, but he’s quieted now, and he feels… hollowed out. Like there’s nothing left in him to cry about. Like the sorrow has been sapped from him, leaving him weak and new, ready to be filled again. 

He wonders if Steve feels the same way.

“Is this okay?” Steve asks.

“Yes,” he answers. He doesn’t think it always will be, but for now it feels good to have Steve beside him. He likes it. He doesn’t want Steve to leave.

“You’re really here, right?” Steve asks. He sounds so heartbroken, like he doesn’t believe his luck.

It makes him hurt, to hear Steve like that. So disbelieving. So sad and unsure. 

Bucky lets instinct guide him, though he’ll be the first to admit that he’s not so good with instincts that aren’t “kill” and especially those that fall under the heading “human”, but he reaches out and lays his hand over Steve’s wrist, looping his fingers together and holding on.

Steve makes another one of those wounded animal noises he’s been making most of the night, and Bucky lets go to turn on his side and tug at Steve, until he shuffles over and presses his face against Bucky’s neck. Bucky drapes his arm around Steve’s back and feels the wetness of Steve’s tears as they fall against his skin and slide down to the sheets.

They stay like that for a long time.

“Steve?” he says, eventually. It might be the first time he’s spoken without Steve speaking to him first.

“Yeah?” Steve mumbles. He sounds like he’s mostly asleep, and Bucky finds that he has memories of this voice, of the way he’s slurring.

He shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

Steve lifts his head and looks at him. “You can tell me, if you want.”

He shrugs. “I’m not sure I can stay.”

Steve nods, and ducks his head down again. “I’m not gonna stop you if you need to go,” he says, but he’s clutching at Bucky’s hoodie as though the thought is physically painful. “But--”

“Yeah?”

“If you go, can I come with you?”

He thinks about it for a minute, thinks about how much it doesn’t ache anymore, now that he’s with Steve, and then he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry about the awkward there at the end. If I tell you there will be more in this 'verse will that help? Because there will definitely be more in this 'verse. 
> 
> In the meantime, feel free to come holler at me on [tumblr](belovedmuerto.tumblr.com).


End file.
